My husband and I had our appointment in Chicago and were able to figure out all issues we have had so far but there is one big item holding us back! My grandfather has different dates of birth and his name is spelled differently on a couple of items. On his birth certificate it is Salvatore Bonafide (or what we thought(?) what his b/c) and the date is Jan. 22 1916 which makes no sense. All of his records (death, army, marriage etc.) have his birthday as 11/20/1916 and he was even a judge and police officer so somehow he got by with that date. However, I have run out of ideas to find something that has both that date of birth and his parent's name. Any suggestions would be really appreciated!

Is it possible that the Birth Certificate date is wrong? Maybe the town clerk wrote up the certificate months after his birth and put his birth day down in January instead of November. Have you been able to find a Baptism Certificate as that may show the actual birth day and the spelling of his name.

Unfortunately he was born here so there is no ship record. I do have his baptismal record but it is not sufficient as that lists Nov. 19 1915 adding a new date into the mix. To me it makes sense that his actual birthday was Nov. 19 1915 and as Italia1963 stated the record was done in Jan so that is the date that was used. All of his other records have Nov. 20 1916 and cannot me changed so I was told that the baptismal is not enough.

Were his birth record and baptismal record both recently received? Did you actually see the original records? I would follow-up with these just to make absolutely sure that there were no errors in transcription.

When I requested my GM's baptismal record, they actually sent me 2 --one for my GM Rosa with her correct birth date and one for a Rosa who was born about a year earlier and presumably died. I guess there's a slight chance that the baptismal record you have is for an earlier child of the same parents.

I would go into the office if you can. I spent 2-1/2 years looking for my GF's baptismal record when it ended up being in the first place I requested. And the people at my mother's church repeatedly said they didn't have hers until she found an old copy and finally they had to admit it was exactly where it was supposed to be. These people are busy and may not be that careful.

Once you have resolved these discrepancies to your satisfaction, you might consider trying to get a "one and the same" letter from the Archivists.

There may have been a mistranscription of the numbers (November/11 vs. January/1) and the archivist may have written the "11" as a "1".

You may try to go in person to the place in Cook County where the archives are kept and ask them to check if another person with the same name was born in November. If not, you can point out the obvious error and ask them to issue a "one and the same" statement as Karen suggests.

During my genealogy research, I noticed that many times in my Italian family a second (sometimes even a third) child was given the same name as one who died in infancy so it's possible that the original birth certificate you have is for another child in the family.

I have asked them to research for an additional birth certificate from November. I will contact the archives directly and see if I can get anywhere. It sounds like the archives department would provide the one and the same document, is that correct? What do I need to provide to them in order to get this?Thanks!

Very few works have been published in English on the topics of Italian heraldry, nobility and onomatology as these relate to genealogy. Yet all three fields depend upon genealogical research. This concise presentation is not intended as a historical treatise, but rather as a simple guide for those i...

In order to provide you with the best online experience we use cookies.